Unilateral Slaughter

"Good stuff."

Qin Xa put away the goggles, tossed them into his backpack, then calmly considered his options.

After spending half a second devising a plan, Qin Xa took a smoke grenade from his backpack and forced himself to remain calm.

He needed to improvise a new way of using his psychic powers.

After taking a minute to confirm that he could wield his psychic powers as intended, he darted out and rapidly closed in on the enemy's position.

An Astartes possessed astonishing mobility.

Like the White Scars Astartes he had seen as a child, Qin Xa moved through the complex battlefield like an acrobat, clearing every obstacle between himself and the enemy with effortless, incredible speed.

He could tell how thick a wall was and decide whether to smash through it or climb out a window and go around. In short, he avoided corridors and front entrances that might be laden with defensive measures.

At last, the six people gathered together—wearing Power Armor, carrying beam cannons, and searching for enemies through their goggles—heard something and turned toward the sound.

A man with a heavy machine gun strapped to his back suddenly burst through a wall. Amid countless chunks of rubble and debris spraying in every direction, he raised a hand gripping a round object.

His entire body was covered in frost. Through the goggles, he gave off no heat at all, just like the debris around him.

"Fire—"

The man who instinctively tried to give the order had his brain pierced by the round object Qin Xa threw. It exploded inside the unlucky man's head, sending countless fragments flying in every direction and shredding the others.

Qin Xa stood unharmed amid the corpses and lightly waved his hand. The Psychic Barrier before him dissipated.

"Urgh... urgh..."

Qin Xa heard someone making the ragged, difficult gasps of a damaged respiratory system. Following the sound, he discovered there was still one survivor on the ground.

Whether he was lucky or unlucky was hard to say. He lay there clutching his bleeding neck, drawing breaths but unable to let them out.

After the medical system inside his Power Armor injected him with a dose of medicine, he gradually caught his breath and weakly asked, "You... who are you?"

"The one who will make all of you tremble day and night," Qin Xa replied. "The Slaughterer."

Qin Xa was no longer using psychic powers to interfere with anyone's vision, so the survivor on the ground recognized him as the psyker who had made his name in a single battle at the Arena.

Qin Xa took the heavy machine gun off his back and smashed it hard into the survivor's head.

After killing another man, Qin Xa opened the heavy machine gun's magazine and found that ten rounds remained.

The ammunition for this heavy machine gun was thicker and longer than Qin Xa's fingers.

Qin Xa took one apart and inspected it.

It contained a concentrated liquid propellant. He did not understand its exact workings, but a quick ignition test revealed that it had extremely violent explosive properties and a fragile projectile.

It was clearly fragmentation ammunition intended for killing personnel.

The information was not especially useful, but Qin Xa still tested and recorded it, because it would help him identify military equipment on Nuceria.

After rapidly gathering information, Qin Xa swiftly picked up every useful, portable item from the bodies.

Pistols, explosives, beam cannons.

See-through goggles.

Even the chips inside the Power Armor, along with various mechanical parts Qin Xa believed he would need later.

Finally, Qin Xa pulled the cords from the Power Armor lining, bundled up everything he had collected that he could carry back, slung it over his back, and continued onward.

After advancing for a while longer, Qin Xa abruptly stopped.

His Psychic Premonition appeared again.

After instantly reviewing the premonition, Qin Xa turned his gaze toward the place it revealed.

Then a ripple appeared across an apparently empty wall. A completely transparent sheet-like object dropped to the floor, revealing the person hidden behind it.

"You're not at the Arena right now?" Qin Xa stared in astonishment at the exposed fugitive.

That man was the person in charge of the Arena.

"Why would I be at the Arena?" the man in charge retorted. "This is the manor bestowed upon me by Tark Patriarch."

"What did you do for that lunatic to offer me such generous terms to kill you?" Qin Xa's face seemed to be filled with nothing but confusion. "That lunatic offered me three conditions in exchange for killing your entire family."

The man in charge proved remarkably quick-witted at the brink of death.

He frowned, thought for a moment, then answered, "My master definitely didn't send you to kill me! There's another Tark in this manor—my master's brother."

Qin Xa frowned in thought for several seconds, then looked up at the man in charge with an expression of helpless amusement. "I just removed my psychic disguise. You saw me, so you still have to die."

The man in charge choked for a moment.

"But I'm not entirely here because of that lunatic Tark Patriarch's business. I don't care about that lunatic's affairs at all."

"You can live a little longer." Qin Xa looked around. "By the way, does your house have a library or something?"

Realizing that Qin Xa had misunderstood Tark Patriarch's orders but did not seem to care much about them, the man in charge—who had believed from beginning to end that Qin Xa was unquestionably serving Tark Patriarch—gradually relaxed.

At least Qin Xa was not going to act immediately. Even if this slave who secretly served Tark Patriarch had misunderstood the order, there was still room to negotiate.

"Yes." The man in charge nodded.

"Lead the way." Qin Xa gestured for him to proceed.

The man in charge led the way.

Qin Xa followed behind him.

"So you secretly serve Tark Patriarch," the man in charge said as they walked. "No wonder he concealed the fact that you were a psyker, allowing the Slaughterer Arena team to fight you without any preparation."

"Why do you think I serve that lunatic?" Qin Xa asked, deeply puzzled.

"He isn't a lunatic. He's merely a good man who has suffered too many wounds," the man in charge replied. "You don't know his past, so you think he's a cruel, cold tyrant. But he isn't."

To explain what kind of man Tark was, the man in charge kept talking, defending the finest master in his eyes.

"When he was young, he was the sixty-seventh child in the previous Tark Patriarch's household. No one paid much attention to him."

"Later, he became Patriarch because he was cunning... no, because he was clever and daring. But he never wanted to hurt anyone."

"He was actually very kind, very empathetic."

Qin Xa, who had patiently listened up to this point, kept rolling his eyes.

The man in charge could not see Qin Xa's expression, so he continued speaking.

If Qin Xa had watched and analyzed the expression of this Arena master, he would have understood that this not particularly intelligent man was speaking from the heart.

"He's a noble, but he has never abused his own slaves. He even had a romantic relationship with a female slave."

"Can you believe that? Slaves are livestock. The only difference between them is whether they're male or female, yet my master treats them as people."

"Let me clarify: the slaves I mean aren't servants like me. I was qualified to be a servant only because I came from a minor noble family. A slave's status is far beneath mine."

"..."

Qin Xa suddenly recalled how Tark Patriarch had treated his personal servants during the meal.

He had not been cruel. He chatted and laughed with them, even said thank you.

But Qin Xa felt that this was merely further ironclad evidence that the madman was mentally unwell.

Perhaps Tark had good qualities...

But he was still a lunatic.

Whether one was that lunatic's enemy or friend, it was fucking terrifying.

"Cut the crap." Qin Xa kicked the man in charge. "I don't care what kind of bastard this Tark is. Right now, I'm slaughtering the whole family of you so-called servant from a minor noble family. When it's Tark's entire family's turn someday, I'll slaughter them just the same, without the slightest mercy."